The present invention relates to an apparatus for feeding packaging machines with stacks of sheet material.
In particular, the present invention relates to an apparatus for feeding packaging machines with stacks of cutout sheets for cigarette packets.
As is known, cigarette packaging machines are fed with stacks of cardboard cutouts intended to constitute the outer container of the packets. The stacks of cardboard cutouts are arranged on a belt conveyor which advances step by step, so as to convey said stacks to means for transferring the individual cardboard cutouts to a processing line of the machine.
Currently, the stacks of cutouts are manually arranged on the input conveyor of the packaging machine. This considerably reduces the productivity of the machine and entails a considerable cost in labor. The aim of the present invention is to solve the above described problem by means of an apparatus which allows to feed packaging machines with stacks of cardboard cutouts in a fully automatic manner. A further object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus which is simple in concept, absolutely reliable in operation and versatile in use.